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On South Sudan: Ethnic Minorities And Political Autonomy

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  • On South Sudan: Ethnic Minorities And Political Autonomy

    ON SOUTH SUDAN: ETHNIC MINORITIES AND POLITICAL AUTONOMY
    By Dr. Evgeni Klauber

    Magazine - Independent commentary from Israel and the Palestinian territories
    http://972mag.com/southern-sudans-independence-ethnic-minorities-and-political-autonomy/
    June 29 2011

    With Ethiopian peacekeepers en route to try and secure calm in Abyei,
    a contested region that lies on the border between Sudan and Southern
    Sudan, Dr. Evgeni Klauber considers how the future of the region will
    determine relations between what will soon be two sovereign states.

    Earlier this week, the leaders of the Sudanese government and the Sudan
    People~Rs Liberation Movement agreed to withdraw their troops from the
    contested Abyei region, after the United States requested that the UN
    Security Council authorize the deployment of peacekeepers from Addis
    Ababa to monitor the problematic region. Western commentators argued
    that this is a good way to ease the tension along the border region
    between the North and South ~V a border that will divide two sovereign
    states, which will declare their independence on July 9. In January of
    this year, the United States and the international community celebrated
    with the people of South Sudan their future indepencence ~V a political
    outcome of the referendum in which 98 percent of southerners agreed
    to secede from the North and to establish their new independent state.

    Issues of state building, nation building, and political arrangements
    with ethnic minorities thus arise once again. What is the best
    political arrangement that the future state of Southern Sudan should
    adopt in order to solve the problem of ethnic groups, such as Misseriya
    and Dinka in Abyei? Should it give these ethnic minorities group
    rights to preserve their culture within Southern Sudan or should
    the newly emerged state limit them to individual rights, which would
    allow them to preserve their culture in the private sphere, but not
    to sustain their uniqueness as a group? Can political autonomy provide
    a feasible and peaceful solution for the minorities in the region?

    The political status of Abyei, which is situated in the border area
    between the North and the South, has yet to be decided. The Southern
    region is rich in oil ~V about 80 percent of Sudan~Rs oil is in the
    south). Various ethnic minorities live in the South ~V for example,
    the Misseriya and Dinka, who identify with the country~Rs North
    and South, respectively. If the Misseriya aren~Rt well-treated,
    they will know to ask for military assistance from the militant,
    failed and disintegrating North. The basis for the future conflict
    can already be identified: earlier this month, Sudanese President
    Omar al-Bashir accused the militant forces of the South (SPLA) for
    attacking the North~Rs forces (SAF) in the disputed region. Although
    Western observers claimed that the South did not initiate any violence,
    the president gave order to his fighter planes to bomb the civilian
    population in the region. Primary victims of the bombing last month
    were members of the Dinka ethnic group, who were historically located
    in the Abyei region and for the thirty last years have suffered from
    attacks from the North. This bombing of the Dinka earlier this month
    is quintessential, after years of marginalization policies along
    with the attempts to drive them from the region ~V a process that
    would provide the North with the political claim to the area even
    after the declaration of the South~Rs independence, which will most
    probably include the Abyei area.

    Under the agreement signed in 2005, the Abyei region is to hold a
    referendum through which it will decide whether it wants to join
    the Southern state or to stay with the North. The problem is that
    al-Bashir makes great efforts to clean up Abyei from Dinka and to
    insert nomadic Misseriya tribes who are closer in their political
    views to the regime in Khartoum, the capital of the North. This
    deliberate policy toward the Dinka was developed to strengthen the
    North~Rs claim to the future of Abyei.

    According to materialist logic, if the disputed area, rich in oil,
    lies in the Southern state, then the North will do anything in
    its power to regain control over the region. This could entail
    supporting rebels who identify with the North, explaining to the
    international community how its diaspora is being oppressed by the
    ~Sbloody~T Southern regime, and investing efforts to increase the
    presence of the tribal Misseriya identified with the North in order
    to gain a foothold in the region. But materialistic logic is not
    always right: states do not necessarily tend to intervene to protect
    their diasporas even in commercially benefical places. For example,
    see Russia: it did not intervene on behalf of the Russian-speakers in
    the coal-rich Donbas, or on behalf of the Russian-speaking minority
    in Kazakhstan. Russia did intervene, however, in 2008, on behalf
    of ethnic minorities who identified themselves with Russia but did
    not provide the Russian state with unique economic benefits. This
    was in the case, of course, of South-Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two
    autonomous regions inside Georgia, which after the events of August
    2008 were recognized by Russia as sovereign states.

    Intervention for minorities who are politically autonomous is more
    common. States intervene on behalf of organized groups ~V those groups
    that have enough institutional resources to become sovereign nations.

    If so, what explains the intervention of one state on behalf
    ethnic minorities in newly emerged states? I would argue that
    what explains political intervention in newly emerged states is
    a political arrangement, such as autonomy, that makes an ethnic
    minority more ~Seligible~T for such assistance. If the newly emerged
    state provides an ethnic minority with political autonomy (self-rule
    within the territory of a sovereign state), then the intervention of
    the homeland state on behalf of this minority is more likely. Countries
    tend to intervene for organized minorities with functional elites that
    control already existing organizational resources. Russians intervened
    in Georgia for Russian-speaking autonomous regions ~V South Ossetia
    and Abkhazia, but did not intervene to assist minorities that are
    not organized by means of political autonomy (like Russian-speakers
    in Baltic states). Armenians intervened in the autonomous Nagorno ~V
    Karabakh region on behalf of their Armenian diaspora in Azerbaijan,
    but they did not intervene to assist the not-autonomous Armenian
    diaspora in Georgia.

    If that is the case, what should we expect in Sudan? If Southern
    Sudan~Rs future government grants Muslim minorities in the Abyei region
    politically autonomous status, this may lead to a renewed conflict.

    After gaining political autonomy, the Muslim minority will acquire
    organizational resources, symbols of statehood, and will very quickly
    formulate its claim for annexation back to Northern Sudan or for the
    establishment of a new sovereign state in the region. This scenario
    could end in another civil war. It is important to note that political
    autonomy is not always the wrong solution: autonomy can be also a
    useful tool that secures group rights for ethnic minorities. The
    solution of political autonomy worked relatively well (as it turned
    out recently) in the Basque country, Catalonia, South Tyrol, and
    Scotland. But political autonomy may lead to violence in the context
    of the newly emerged states, which build their nations at a faster
    pace. For newly emerged countries, nationalism is not only a project
    to acquire an independent state but also a tool to establish and
    to accumulate political legitimacy. Newly emerged states are often
    ~Snationalizing states~T with an accelerated pace of nation and
    state building. Autonomous minorities in newly emerged nationalizing
    states may choose an exit strategy that leads to secession if they
    feel scared. Fast nation building might scare autonomous minorities:
    the newly emerged state can change its language overnight, for example.

    Autonomous Muslim minorities, then, may rise in the future against
    the government in the South ~V which will increase the chances of
    the North~Rs intervention. This scenario can lead to more violence
    in the region.

    Let's turn now to the Arab-Israeli conflict. I argue that political
    autonomy is an originating mechanism responsible for the genesis of
    an institution, which make ethnic mobilization possible. Imagine a
    newly emerged Palestinian state with a Jewish minority in Hebron. The
    first scenario would be to integrate Jews into this newly emerged
    Palestinian nation - an unlikely scenario due to the religious
    differences between the two groups. Another scenario would be to
    provide Jews in the newly emerged Palestinian state with group rights
    - i.e. granting them political autonomy. This scenario will lead to
    them acquiring institutional resources of self-governance that would
    make Israeli intervention on behalf of its autonomous Jewish diaspora
    more likely. We cannot imagine that Israel will intervene in Syria
    on behalf of ill-treated Jews, because the Jewish minority in Syria
    is not politically autonomous. Autonomous Jews in the newly emerged
    Palestinian state, however, will be a different story. Here, chances
    are that Israel will intervene once group rights or even individual
    rights of this autonomous institutionalized diaspora will be violated.

    As long as Israeli intervention in the possibly-emerging Palestinian
    state depends on the political arrangement between the Jewish minority
    and the Palestinian state, the status of Jews living within its
    borders should be a top priority for resolution.

    Dr. Evgeni Klauber received his PhD in Comparative Politics and
    International Relations at the University of Delaware, specializing in
    ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet Republics. A Fulbright scholar,
    he is now back at Tel-Aviv University as a visiting lecturer. His
    current research concentrates on regime change in Russia and the
    post-Soviet Bloc.

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